RECLAIM

Created over 6 days during the Midsummer Jam 2019

Made by a team of 3 to the theme "Spreading Out", Reclaim is a relaxing idle game about slowly taking back an urban environment. Starting from a single flower, the player spreads vines through a Voxel city, slowly gaining resources with each new plant they place. With enough resources, they can take over entire buildings, until the city belongs to nature.

You can play the game here!

DESIGN

The key focus was on creating a hypercasual experience, which could regularly be played for short sessions. The art and controls were inspired by similar games on mobile platforms.

Creating a slow and relaxed game for a fast-paced competition was a key challenge. Balancing the gain and loss of resources, in particular, had to be carefully managed to retain player interest so frequent playtesting by the team and friends was vital.

PROGRAMMING

The first game jam project in which I was the sole Programmer, I learned a lot about creating reusable systems and tools, such as the Vine's grid system and flower variation. As the project grew I also recognised the need for proper organisation using namespaces and inheritance to maintain an overview of the game.

Key features included:

-Grid system for vine and flower placement

-Camera controls including rotation, zooming and switching to an orthographic "Birdseye" view

-Procedural raycast system to update closed spaces on the grid, utilised while the artists made and changed tile pieces.

-Management system for the gain and loss of resources.

-UI system.

Beyond anything else the game taught me the importance of decimal points. In a small last-minute update to the original build I stuck one in the wrong place and gathering resources took 10 times as long as it should have. People at the play party had the game running for 6 hours!